Re: Buster with MATE without systemd

Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Devuan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devuan - it appears that the folks over there have had to modify precisely udisks2 and policykit. This is not a Devuan support list - but it looks as if stock Debian may not allow the switch once a full system is installed. If you were to install only a minimum, text-only system, switch to sysvinit and then use tasksel to add the MATE desktop environment, it might then work but there's no guarantee unless you try this.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 12:30 PM Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> wrote:

Hi.

On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 07:28:34PM -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:
> So, my question is: Can I replace systemd with sysvint and still keep MATE?

Exibit 1 (mate-core and systemd-sysv are installed):

# apt install sysvinit-core systemd-
...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
caja dbus-user-session gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-daemons libpam-systemd
...
systemd systemd-sysv udisks2
The following NEW packages will be installed:
initscripts insserv startpar sysv-rc sysvinit-core

Exibit 2:

# apt install sysvinit-core systemd- udisks2
...
udisks2 : Depends: libpam-systemd but it is not going to be installed

Exibit 3:

# apt install sysvinit-core systemd- policykit-1
...
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
policykit-1 : Depends: libpam-systemd but it is not going to be installed

So, to answer your question. It may be possible to keep assorted MATE
programs (text editor, terminal, etc) and have sysvinit-core installed.
But everything that makes MATE the DE (i.e. file manager, panel,
session, etc) is tied to either udisks2 or policykit, and you cannot
keep those (both require libpam-systemd) and have sysvinit-sysv.

Even if you cheat it with equivs, and create a replacement package
for libpam-systemd, both udisks2 or policykit - you'll just break those
and leave yourself with non-mounting storage media and without the
ability to suspend and poweroff.

Reco